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March 7, 2008

Good News: Coke Bottles Gone

Fenway Park will add another corporation-sponsored seating area this season -- the "Coca-Cola Corner", a 412-seat addition to the State Street Pavilion area.

There will be a huge sign over the left field section, which

will measure roughly 42 feet wide and 12 feet high, and will feature 1,059 LED lights that will scroll through the iconic Coca-Cola logo. The 25-second scroll, which will illuminate lights in a pattern that replicates writing, will be done in 254 steps.

My favourite part of this announcement?

In exchange for the huge sign, the three 25-foot fiberglass Coke bottles that have been a part of the left field light towers since 1997 have been removed.

Some bloggers areexpressingnostalgia for the bottles, but not me. They were, from their first day to their last, a garish embarrassment.

Manny can hit them just as far without the giant coke ads! I promise, you'll all have just as much fun at Fenway without giant bottles of corporate advertising. After your first game without them, you'll forget they were ever there.

I won't miss the bottles themselves, though they did have a certain charm that grew on me over the years.

Hitting the Coke bottles with a baseball was like hitting the cart boy at the driving range. Or going to the batting cage and hitting the ball perfectly so that it goes through the hole in the fence where the machine is. Or hitting a Teletubby doll in the face with a mallet. These things are inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but they're all oddly satisfying.

Without the support of advertising I shudder to think of what the cost would be to attend a game.

The cost of tickets is what management thinks the market will pay -- and not a penny more. Same think with the price of a beer or hot dog. It has nothing to do with what ads are in the park (or what the players are being paid).

A little off topic, but how cool was Manny's BOMB off of K-Rod last year. I mean DAMNNNNN.

I ordered and received the MLB World Series DVD and the NESN DVD -- both of which feature the bomb on the extras. It's a thing of beauty. And he does the mummy of all mummies!!!

The MLB DVD extras have the 4 HR against good ol' Chase Wright, the Manny walkoff and the last bit of Buchholz's no-no.

Pop in the NESN disc and guess what? THEY HAVE THE EXACT SAME CLIPS AND NOTHING ELSE. Well, not nothing. There are two (but only two) Remy/Orsillo clips (the air guitar tumble and the pizza toss) and Bot hunting a moose. It didn't look like it was Mussina, so I didn't watch that one.

Not only that, but the pizza clip cuts off before Remy notes that the cast-aside slice still took pretty good. Come on NESN! It's your own clip. Include the full thing.

Without the support of advertising I shudder to think of what the cost would be to attend a game.

Support?? You make it sound like the Red Sox are a charity and Coca-Cola is a foundation.

I'm not saying we can live in a world without advertising. (Although we could.) I'm objecting to the encroachment of corporations into every moment and every facet of our game. At the risk of this comment being a redirect, I explain myself more fully here.

The sponsorship of every little piece of the game -- lineups, every trip to the mound, every pitching change, caught stealing -- really pisses me off. We are all pretty used to it by now, and generally tune it out, but it's constant. Grrrrr.

I remember fondly the Fenway of Tom Yawkey's day when only the Jimmy Fund advertised in the Park. That refusal to take ads was different even then, understood to be planted firmly in another era, the era when a baseball 'field' still somehow connected to real fields--and at least that aspect of Yawkey's stubborn old-fashionedness could be respected (if not the aspects that led to RS being the last integrated team in MLB.)

So, anything that dials down the glitz a notch or two is fine with me.

Look at old films of Fenway during the Forties and early fifties. The Wall was COVERED with ads: it looked like a big quilt.If you live long enough, just about anything will make you nostalgic...even crass advertising.

You know, I hated the Coke bottles, but they stopped registering on me after a while...they were invisible. Someone mentioned them last year and I had to think about whether they were still there or not.

Look at old films of Fenway during the Forties and early fifties. The Wall was COVERED with ads: it looked like a big quilt/

Hell, it was covered in ads in 1912! Seeing those old ads in B&W photos doesn't bother me -- is that because those products/companies no longer exist? Of course, those were merely signs/words. There was no blinking or noise coming out of them, and they weren't huge objects.

I don't like the covered Wall in the 40s and 50s, though. Those ads -- soap, razors -- were HUGE!!! I prefer the ads (if they have to be there) like they are now, simple white on green.